Rachel Paradis, Mireille Demers, Etienne Dion
and John Tivendell, Université de Moncton, Canada
Bogdan Pietrulewicz*, Kazimierz Wielki Univerity in Bydgoszcz
Interpersonal pollution in organizations:
exploring ethical leadership and the dark
side of organizations
Abstract
In the current paper the term of interpersonal pollution refers to the contamination of
the ecosystem in the organizational context. According to classic systems theory human
existence is influenced by the different types of positive and negative environmental
factors. Formulated by our research group this new approach helps understand our behavior when we are at work and in more our lifespan that may influence behavior in
varying degrees.
QQ
Introduction
In his book on environmental stress (Evans, 1982) and later in the handbook of environmental psychology (Stokols & Altman, 1987), Gary Evans
argued that we impact the quality of our environment by the energy we use,
the decisions we make and the policies we support, much as a suboptimal
quality environment will impact on our behaviour and well-being, i.e. both
our physical and mental health. However as observed the famous French
psychologist, Claude Levy-Leboyer (1988; Lévy-Leboyer & Duron, 1991;
Lévy-Leboyer, Bonnes, Chase, Ferreira-Marques & Pawlik, 1996) concluded in
the late 1980’s, awareness of the importance of environmental degradation
and of environmental hazards came very slowly and, if one were to only follow
the current international conferences on climate change, this awareness is
* Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Bogdan Pietrulewicz, e-mail: [email protected]
8
Rachel Paradis, Mireille Demers, Etienne Dion et al.
still incomplete only very gradually being followed by some collective action.
Bronfenbrenner (1991) and Levy-Leboyer (1977) believes that is absolutely
necessary to study human behavior in different natural settings. These early
works nevertheless grew out of the environmental and ecological concerns
of the 1960’s (Craik, 1973; Kates & Wohlwill, 1966), which eventually led numerous authors to explore how human behaviour can affect the quality of our
environment including in hospitals, schools, offices and neighbourhoods (see
Evans, 1982). Although these authors often looked at the effects of “crowding” and space as environmental stressors, they did not look at the potential
effects of a polluted interpersonal atmosphere such as one caused by unethical workplace behaviour or a negative organisational climate.
The term pollution refers to the contamination of the environment
by substances or actions that are harmful, and environmental pollution is associated with an unhealthy ecosystem (e.g., air, water, earth; see Chapman,
2007). However we can now conceive of a variety of environments and certainly multiple types of pollution that would be unhealthy for humans (e.g.,
human induced ecological degradation in Howard, 1997; the role of social
norms in Mantovani, Tarola and Vergari, 2014; and the concept of social
pollution in Sarine, 2012). Among the sciences, environmental psychology
perhaps primus inter pares has examined the dynamic and reciprocal relation between human behaviours and the environment (Leather, Zarola and
Santos, 2010). Indeed this science defines the environment as encompassing
both the natural and built environment, the physical and social environment,
the real and virtual environment, as well as both the more specific such as
home, school, work, park, city, among other, as well as global environment
(Gifford, 2014). Meanwhile according to Giuliani and Scopelliti (2009),
the transaction between a person and an environment can be evaluated according to four modes: interactive (spatial cognition, sense of space, identity,
etc.); evaluative (aesthetic, environmental quality, risk perception, etc.); operative (pro-environmental behaviour, use of space, location choice, etc.); and
the responsive (environmental stressors, environmental properties, impact
of environment on performance, health and behaviours).
With this latter person-environment perspective in mind, this article will
focus on the organisational environment and, having suggested a taxonomy
of different kinds of pollution existing within this workplace we will introduce a new concept, “interpersonal pollution”, explore its links with both an
unethical workplace behaviour and a negative organisational climate, and
discuss its potential antecedents and consequences.
Interpersonal pollution in organizations: exploring ethical leadership…
QQ
9
Pollution in the workplace
Much as there are different types of environments, there are different
kinds of pollution. For instance in a workplace environment we can conceive
of two broad kinds of pollution: physical pollution and interpersonal pollution (see Turk, Turk, & Wittes, 1972).
QQ Physical pollution
In the workplace, pollution can arise from physical aspects such as harmful substances being found in the air, in the water or in the building itself (e.g.
rodents, mould, bacteria, chemical pollutants and radioactivity). Additionally,
there are such aspects as excessive noise, poor lightning, spatial crowding,
inappropriate temperature and certain odours which can be perceived as
pollutants. More recently several researchers in environmental psychology
have begun to address the role of the physical work environment on employees’ health, satisfaction and performance (e.g. Leather, Zarola and Santos,
2010). According to Leather et al. (2010) these stressors, be they daily hassles or a chronic condition, can directly or indirectly influence employees’
health and well-being, with work-related consequences ranging from simple
annoyance to more serious cardiovascular diseases, impaired cognitive performance, sleep disturbance, job dissatisfaction and poor job performance
(see Basner, Babisch, Davis, Brink, Clark, Janssen & Stansfeld, 2014; Danuser,
Moser, Vitale-Sethre, Hirsig and Krueger, 2003; Gaygen and Hedge, 2009; Ooi
and Goh,1997; Sundstrom, Town, Rice, Osborn & Brill, 1994; Willem, 2006).
QQ Interpersonal pollution
In the workplace pollution can also arise from non-physical aspects, such
as information pollution (i.e. in addition to getting too much information,
contamination may occur from being supplied with irrelevant, redundant,
and unsolicited information; see Orman, 1984) and social pollution (i.e that
which can be caused by socially undeclared and indecent work (see Cammalleri, 2012) or by systemic prejudice and discrimination (see Sarine, 2012).
However, we believe that there is another source of pollution from within
the organisational milieu that can also be detrimental to employees and ultimately to the organisation: i.e. interpersonal pollution.
10
Rachel Paradis, Mireille Demers, Etienne Dion et al.
We think of this latter as a somewhat boarder more global concept that includes various types of both blatant and subtle organizational maltreatments.
In the workplace these may range from the darker forms of leadership behavior, such as manifestations of tyranny and abuse of power (Ashforth, 1994;
Tepper, 2008; McFarlane-Ossmann & Curtis, 2012), on through to harassment
be it sexual, physical or psychological (Carroll, 2006; Hoel & Beale, 2006) and
psychological harassment’s predecessors, incivility (Cortina, Magley, Williams
& Langhout, 2001; Dion, 2009) and blatant antisocial behavior, and finally on to
usually subtle or camouflaged manifestations of non-ethical leadership and organizational climate (Griffin & O’Leary-Kelly, 2004; Hartog & Belschak, 2012).
Thus Interpersonal pollution would include all those social attitudes and behaviors that can contaminate a workplace environment and which can have
a crucial negative impact on the employee’s performance and well-being.
Certainly one of the first examples of these darker workplace behaviours that can contribute to interpersonal pollution are those darker forms
of leader behaviours that are described by Ashforth (1994), Tepper, (2007)
and McFarlane-Ossmann and Curtis (2012). For instance Ashforth (1994)
identifies workplace tyranny as one of these darker behaviours, which is
characterized by the partiality of a supervisor’s decisions and his or her utilization of power for personal purposes. This would imply a supervisor’s lack
of consideration and respect toward subordinates when deciding unilaterally
how problems should be solved, which in turn would discourage individual
job control and initiative. Similarly the leader may abuse his or her power
by engaging in hostile verbal or non-verbal behaviors whilst supervising
members (Tepper, 2007; 2008; 2010). This could include using public criticisms, using loud, angry and rude behaviors and engaging in reckless punitive
actions (Bies, 2000). There are other labels that refer to this workplace tyranny or abusive supervision including: antisocial (Robinson & O’Leary-Kelly,
1998), deviant (Robinson & Bennett, 1995) and poor organizational behaviors (Vardi and Wiemer, 1996), and/or workplace aggression (O’Leary-Kelly,
Griffin & Glew, 1996) and office rudeness (Johnson & Indvik, 2001a, b). They
all represent sources of interpersonal pollution.
Additionally there are those darker workplace behaviours labeled “harassment” that contribute to interpersonal pollution (Ramsay, Troth & Branch,
2010; Rayner & Cooper, 2006; Kelloway, Barling & Hurrell 2010). Harassment
describes a variety of deliberate, offensive and repetitive behaviors which
are intended to disturb or upset others (Carroll, 2006; Beale & Hoel, 2011).
It can involve blatant sexual matters (Fitzgerald & Hesson-McInnis, 1989),
physical acts (Savin-Williams, 1994) or psychological aspect of the person
Interpersonal pollution in organizations: exploring ethical leadership…
11
(Leymann, 1996; Einarsen, 2000; Salin, 2003, Fox & Stallworth, 2005; Thompson-Heames, Harvey & Treadway, 2006, Carroll, 2006; Brun & Kedl, 2006).
The latter is also referred to as bullying (e.g. Salin, 2003; Schuster, 1996).
Fitzgerald and colleagues empirically confirmed the presence of three types
of sexual harassment in the workplace: i.e. cases involving sexual attentions
under threat, general unwanted sexual attention and finally less overt sexual
harassment based on gender (Fitzgerald & Hesson-McInnis, 1989; Gelfand,
Fitzgerald & Darsgow, 1995). Similarly physical harassment in the workplace
can take on many forms of unwelcomed physical behaviors (Baron & Neuman, 1996). Finally psychological harassment, which is any non-physical and
non-sexually motivated interpersonal hostility that is intentional, repeated
and severe enough to harm the health of the victims and their economic status (Namie, 2003), can also take many forms (Hoel & Beale, 2006).
Then there is a more stealthy type of these dark workplace behaviors
that can pollute a worker’s world, somewhat related to psychological harassment, which is organizational incivility (Dion, 2009; Marks, 1996).
Organizational civility is defined as a low intensity deviant behaviour with
an ambiguous intent to injure the target, by violating the norms of mutual
respect for the organization (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). This would include words or actions that are disrespectful, degrading, rude, discourteous
and adopting a condescending attitude toward a co-worker. What is of particular interest is the hypothesis that organizational incivility may indeed be
a precursor of psychological harassment (Dion, 2009), and as such very much
another type of behaviour that can contaminate the working environment.
Finally there is a recent upsurge of interest in non-ethical behaviours
in the workplace, particularly in unethical supervision and unethical organizational climate, and these seems to also be a form if not a source of
interpersonal pollution in the workplace (see Jones & Kavanagh, 1996; Piffa,
Stancatoa, Côté, Mendoza-Dentona & Keltnera, 2012; Robinson & Bennett,
1995). Now relationships between supervisors and subordinates have been
the object of numerous studies (Tepper, 2007; McFarlane-Ossmann & Curtis,
2011) but there is a recent interest in non-ethical supervision (Piffa, et al,
2012). Some refer to this concept as all supervision behaviors transgressing universal ethical norms or principles such as rights, justice, utilitarism
and virtuous character (Donaldson & Dunfee, 1994). This definition assumes
a hierarchical relation in which the supervisor possesses a formal authority toward the subordinate and implies using power and authority in an
inappropriate matter or inappropriate goal which is ultimately harmful to
the employees.
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Rachel Paradis, Mireille Demers, Etienne Dion et al.
Meanwhile one can imagine that when the organization itself seems to
tolerate rudeness and/or harassment type behaviours among its employees,
with or in addition to various forms of corporate abuse and/or unethical
behavior by its leaders, this will result in a polluted organizational environment. Indeed unethical organizational climate has been found to result
in unhealthy relationships between its members and thus dissatisfied and
less performing individuals (see Dickson, Smith, Grojean & Ehrhart, 2001;
Schminke, Ambrose, & Neubaum, 2005). Note that certain types of leaders
and leadership behaviors have sometimes been found to be independent of
his or her organizational climate (see Koene, Vogelaar & Soeters, 2002; Mayer, Kuenzi & Greenbaum, 2010).
In the following section we propose a theoretical framework for study of
interpersonal pollution in the workplace, in fact this is a mediating model to
explain (predict) level of interpersonal pollution and its effects on both individual and organizational consequences.
QQ
A model to predict interpersonal pollution
in a workplace
The following model purports to explain (predict) how ethical leadership
will mediate the link between the dark side of organizational behaviors and
the level of interpersonal pollution in the workplace, and then how the interaction between these antecedent concepts will influence both individual and
organizational outcomes (see Figure 1).
This mediation model finds much of its theoretical foundation linked to
ethics, or the lack of ethics in the workplace. We suggest that the dark side
of organization behaviors and of the organizational environment (which in
one version includes its organizational culture and possibly its work characteristics), interact to cause this interpersonal pollution, which in turn will
influence both individual members’ and organization’s outcomes. There are
several reasons for this proposal.
First, it is logical to assume a causal link between the dark side of organizational behaviors in the workplace and the ethical climate within that same
environment (Trevino, Butterfield & McCabe, 1998). A second reason is that
ethics in the workplace has recently become a popular topic among researchers and practitioners, perhaps not to surprisingly after the world has been
Ethical
Leadership
Mediator
Variable (1)
Level of
interpersonal
pollution in the
workplace
Outcome (1)
Work
Characteristics
Mediator
Variable (2)
Organizational
Effectiveness
Organizational
Productivity &
Individual Performance
Health, Satisfaction &
Outcomes (2)
13
& organizational type outcomes.
organizational
type outcomes
Figure 1: A mediation model to explain the level
of interpersonal
pollution in the workplace, and its impact on both individua
Figure 1: A mediation model to explain the level of interpersonal pollution in the workplace, and its impact on both individual &
Any immediate nonchronic events that might
precipitate a «remise en
question» within the
organization
Situational Factor(s)
Presence of dark side
organizational behaviors
Organizational structures
and culture; Ethical
Organizational Culture;
Environmental Factors
Employees’ characteristics
(personality)
Leaders’ personality &
Individual
Characteristics
Interpersonal pollution in organizations: exploring ethical leadership…
14
Rachel Paradis, Mireille Demers, Etienne Dion et al.
witnessing prominent scandals involving unethical behavior in business, education, government, science, sports, and even in not-for-profit and religious
organizations (see Brown & Trevino, 2006; Cohen, Ding, Lesage & Stolowy,
2010; Webley, Basran, Hayward & Harris, 2010), in both North America and
Europe today (Martin, Resick, Keating & Dickson, 2009).
And, according to Elizabeth Pavese-Kaplan’s recent doctoral thesis
(2013) there is now a lot of scientific evidence linking members’ perceptions
of ethical leadership, to their attitudes and behaviours at work but also to
the organization effectiveness and productivity. Thirdly the literature on
ethics in the workplace offers a lot of evidence for the influence of the organizational environment, particularly between ethical organizational culture
and climate, on both members’ attitudes and behaviours at work and, on
the organization’s effectiveness and productivity (Debode & al., 2013; Trevino & al., 1998; Riivari, 2012; Riivari, Lämsä, Kujala, & Heiskanen, 2012;
Ruiz-Palomino & Martinez-Canas, 2014; Shafer & Simmons, 2011; Kaptein,
2011; Kish-Gephart & al., 2010; Toor & Ofori, 2009).
Finally note that some recent work by Ronald Piccolo using the original
job characteristics model (see Hackman & Oldham, 1976), not only linked
work characteristics to ethical leadership but actually suggests that work
characteristics “fully mediate” the relationship between ethical leadership
and subordinates’ job performance and motivation (Piccolo, Greenbaum, den
Hartog & Folger, 2010).
QQ Individual characteristics
Although the link may often weak it is logical to suggest that individual differences, often represented by personality traits, influence workplace
attitudes and behaviours. (Dion, 2009; Hetland, Sandal, & Johnsen, 2008;
Hollander, 1995; Hunter, 2012; Perreault 1997). In this model we postulate
that the characteristics of leaders and of employees, will contribute to explaining at least their perceptions of ethical leadership in their organization
(see Walumbwa & Schaubroeck, 2009; Kalshoven, Den Hartog & De Hoogh,
2011; Xu, Yu & Shi, 2011). Indeed the University of Bergen professor Hilde
Hetland has suggested that the personality of subordinates influences their
evaluation of leadership effectiveness (Hetland, Sandal, & Johnsen, 2008),
whilst the work of Lim Sandy and Lilia Cortina seems to suggest that people
in power may be a source of what we call here interpersonal pollution (Cortina, Magley, Williams & Langhout, 2001; Sandy & Cortina, 2001).
Interpersonal pollution in organizations: exploring ethical leadership…
15
QQ Environmental factors
In a typical interactionist social psychology model of human behaviour,
one will postulate that individual characteristics, such as attitudes, personality traits or values, and environmental factors, such as the normative
pressures brought by significant others, will interact to determine the behaviour (e.g. Ajzen, 1991; Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Baron & Kenny, 1986). And
indeed since the earliest versions of these interactionist models (e.g. Fishbein
& Ajzen, 1975) there have been oodles of workplace related environmental
factors that have been identified as pertinent, including organizational structures (Mintzberg, 2004 ), organizational climate and culture (Denison, 1996;
Fey & Denison, 2003; Judge, Thoresen, Bono & Patton 2001) and more recently ethical culture. Moreover the literature on ethics in the workplace also
offers a lot of evidence about the influence of the organizational environment
on members’ attitudes and behaviours and on the organization’s effectiveness and productivity (Debode & al., 2013; Trevino & al., 1998; Riivari, 2012;
Riivari, Lämsä, Kujala, & Heiskanen, 2012; Ruiz-Palomino & Martinez-Canas,
2014; Shafer & Simmons, 2011; Kish-Gephart & al., 2010; Kaptein, 2011;
Kish-Gephart & al., 2010; Huhtala et al., 2011; Toor & Ofori, 2009).
QQ Situational factors
The third category of antecedents that have been placed in our model
(see figure 1), situational factors, may be a tad of a misnomer. What we intended to include herein were pertinent yet non structural variables that
might influence a person’s perceptions of the nature and level of ethical leadership being provided and the level of interpersonal pollution that can be
found in his or her workplace. One example might be those daily frustrations
that can be found at work and at home (Vallerand, 1994), or momentary feelings of exhaustion or injustice (Blau & Andersson, 2005) or even certain non
chronic conflict situations (Einarsen, 2000).
QQ Mediating and outcome variables
A few years ago Linda Trevino and Michael Brown did a literature review of what they considered a newly emerging and as yet unexplored area of
research: ethical leadership (Brown & Trevino, 2006). Since then a number
of studies have emerged including the one by Walumbwa and Schaubroeck
16
Rachel Paradis, Mireille Demers, Etienne Dion et al.
(2009) which explored some of the antecedents and consequences of the concept, those by David Mayer who, in one using Blau’s (1964) model of social
power, found that it influences organizational citizenship behavours (see
OCB above; Mayer, Kuenzi, Greenbaum, Bardes & Salvador, 2009; Mayer, et
al, 2010), then a more recent one by Walumba (Walumbwa, Mayer, Wang,
Wang, Workman & Christensen, 2011) also linking ethical leadership to employee behaviours, and the one by Toor and Ofori (2009) which found some
evidence for it having a mediating role between organizational culture and
some of those employee outcomes.
Next we propose that the characteristics of the work itself (see above;
e.g. Hackman & Oldham, 1976) must also be studied as they have been found
to impact both members’ attitudes and behaviours and, the organization effectiveness and productivity (Levesque, 2006; Martel, 2010). The Hackman
and Oldham (1976) work characteristic model is probably one of the most
studied in the industrial and organizational psychology. However other
taxonomies of job characteristics have flourished over the years including
those by Robert Karasek; (1979; see too Parker & al., 2001; Stouten, Van Dijke, & De Cremer, 2012). Studies linking these job characteristics to ethics in
the workplace are scarce but one recent study by Piccolo reported that some
of Hackman’s job characteristics had a mediation effect between ethical leadership and the effort that employees expend at work (Piccolo, Greenbaum,
Den Hartog, & Folger, 2010).
Finally we propose that to test our model we must also look at the possible impact of, first ethical leadership, and then of interpersonal pollution
itself, on both positive as well as negative work outcomes. Moreover, as we
have hinted above, our taxonomy of work outcomes should involve both individual employee level work outcomes, which may include individual worker’s
health as well as his or he level of job satisfaction and job performance, and
finally organizational level outcomes including the organization’s level of
productivity and effectiveness.
Employees work attitudes and behaviors
We think that these interpersonal pollutants will affect several employees’ work attitudes and behaviors such as intention to leave the organization
and encourage the development of anti-social behaviors (Tepper & al, 2009;
Cortina & al. 2001). They may also contribute to job turnover and premature departure (Pearson & al, 2000), lower levels of individual performance
(Dunlop & Lee, 2004; Johnson & Indvik, 2001; Zellars & al, 2002), to job
Interpersonal pollution in organizations: exploring ethical leadership…
17
dissatisfaction (Cortina & al., 2001; Richman & al, 1992; SCEP, 2007; STTP,
2007; Tepper, 2000), lack of engagement toward the job and the organization, and also absenteeism (see Tepper, 2007, for a review; Johnson & Indvik,
2001; Pearson & al, 2000; and see Tepper, 2007, for a review;), counterproductive behaviors (Brown & Treviño, 2006; Fox & Stallworth, 2005) and
finally stress and other health related behaviours linked to work (Richman &
al, 1992). Moreover one team of researchers has proposed that in nontraditional types of work, these interpersonal pollutants may pressure women to
over performed (Parker & Griffin, 2002).
Organization’s productivity and effectiveness
We also think that these interpersonal pollutants are damaging to the organization. There may be more observable incidents of frustration, of conflicts
and of violence in the workplace (Andersson & Pearson, 1999; Glomb, 2001;
SCEP, 2007; STTP, 2007). Tremendous financial expenditures may also result
from the consequences associates with these interpersonal pollutants. For
example the cost of abusive supervision in American organizations is estimated at 23,8 billions of dollars per year, ranging from $ 17,000 to $ 24,000
for each severe case (Johnson & Indvick, 2001; Sheehan, McCarthy, Barker &
Henderson, 2001; Tepper et al, 2006;). Some researchers have also highlighted the high organizational costs associated with having a damage reputation
(Karpoff et al., 2008) including that of having difficulty in finding new business partners (Sullivan et al, 2007) while still other researchers observe
the consequences of a decrease in the organization productivity (Pearson et
al, 2000).
QQ
Conclusion
We have hypothesized that many of these interpersonal pollutants may
have negative consequences on employees health, such as psychological
and moral distress (Uhl-Bien & Carsten 2007; Parker & Griffin, 2002; Fox &
Stallworth, 2005), professional burnout (Tepper, 2000), a feeling of being
powerless (Uhl-Bien & Carsten, 2007), somatic health problems (Duffy et
al, 2002) and a decrease in employees wellness (SCEP, 2007; STTP, 2007).
Meanwhile others have suggested that these different types of interpersonal
pollutants in the workplace not only affect employees (Giacalone & Promislo,
2010; 2013; Lim, Cortina & Magley, 2007; Cubela-Adoric & Kvartuc, 2007),
18
Rachel Paradis, Mireille Demers, Etienne Dion et al.
but may also impact a network of individuals other than the employee directly concerned, such as other victims, the witnesses and perhaps even
the aggressors themselves but also the individuals closely related to these, i.e.
such as their friends, their colleagues and even some family members (Hoobler & Brass, 2006). The mental and physical health of all these individuals
can be affected, resulting in such things as stress depression, anxiety and other health problems.
Thus we propose that our model be tested on both positive and negative work outcomes and that our taxonomy of work outcomes should include
both individual level and organizational level outcomes.
QQ
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